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Day 2 Assignment
Post your Day 2 assignment here.
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5 Replies
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Larry Ridlen’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment is…
Pitches need to hook producers quickly. One may have a great story, but without a marketable component, no one may read it.
A man discovers he has the power to traverse dimensions after grudgingly becoming a mule between Jamaican drug lords and the New York mafia in order to pay his special needs brother’s inadvertent gambling debt.
Components of Marketability:
Unique: Not many scripts have a drug mule with the ability to cross into alternate realities.
Great title: BEFUDDLED PATH. I like it because befuddled is a word that, while most people know it’s meaning, not many use it in everyday conversations.
Elevating the pitch:
Unique: For many, drugs provide an escape from reality. Who better than one who facilitates this is better suited to actually delve into and learn to manipulate other realities?
Great Title: Most people do not live their lives
in a straight line. Their paths are wrought with detours, hardships, mistakes,
and regrets; thus, their paths become befuddled. -
Components:
Great title. Rhapsody In Blue
Similar to, “The Long Goodbye” ans “Pelican Brief.”
Bankable role. Our protagonist takes a woman from another man and kills his father, and we love him for that.
What I learned.. Get the yes.
Logline:
After being handed a letter from his unknown, deceased mother, by a sister he never knew existed, a police detective seeks to find the identity of his real father. In the process, he uncovers a political scandal from 35 years ago that his parents were both deeply involved in.
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Jeff’s Marketable Components
Outlining marketable components will help in creating a successful sales campaign.
Serpent’s Tooth: dark comedy
An eccentric businessman’s dementia means financial opportunity but which of his devious children is competent enough to cash in first?
Great Title: Serpent’s Tooth may make some think of a sword and sorcery theme, but it refers to Shakespear’s King Lear, “an ungrateful child is sharper than a serpent’s tooth”.
Timely: The current interest in dementia makes the story about an executive experiencing cognitive decline timely.
Similarity to a box-office success. Professional coverage has compared the screenplay favorably with Succession, a recent successful production.
A great role for a bankable actor. The main role of the businessman as well as two of his daughters are interesting characters that prominent actors might be interested in playing.
An unscrupulous, driven businessman, finds himself losing control as he succumbs to dementia. His daughters vye to take over his empire in a love/hate relationship with each other and the man who taught them everything they know.
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From William Leiren
1. Logline: An insecure poetry professor driving cross-country with his wife to a promising new job suddenly finds himself stalked by his otherworldly doppelganger- a “Fetch” – who’s on a murderous rampage.
2. A. Unique. Yes. Though we’ve seen road race films (Fast & Furious, as well as a slew of road race drive-in movies in the 1970’s- Two Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Eat My Dust, etc., and although we’ve seen evil twin/doppelganger stories (Adaptation, Twin Peaks, about a dozen episodes of Star Trek, etc.), there’s never been a road rage racing film featuring a man and his doppelgänger. It’s a match made in hell.
B. Great Title Yes. Originally, it was just “Ripple”, but one-word titles are too vague and easily forgotten. Changing it to “Ripple Road” gave it flavor, clearly a road trip movie, but with the poetry of the word ripple, as well as the danger of the verb Rip, or the dark acronym, R.I.P. And a very memorable title. You won’t mistake for a different film.
C. True. N/A
D. Timely — connected to some major trend or event. Somewhat. The earlier draft incorporated the pandemic, as a paranoia inducing environment.
E. It’s a first. Yes. In Irish folklore, a “Fetch” is a mirror image creature that springs from our reflection, and is a harbinger of impending death. This has never been given the film treatment before.
F. Ultimate. Yes. What is more terrifying than meeting your own worst self? Without morals, without restraint. And with an agenda to take over your life.
G. Wide audience appeal. Yes. Evil twins and crazed road races? What’s not to love?
H. Adapted from a popular book. N/A
<font face=”inherit”>I. Similarity to a box-office success. Yes. The recent Twin Peaks was given the green </font>light because everyone wanted to see the Dark Lodge version of Dale Cooper face off with quirky, better half. But the show failed to deliver that match-up, opting instead for esoteric art abstracts and little visceral pay-off. This film corrects that mistake.
<font face=”inherit”>J. A great role for a bankable actor. Yes, absolutely! What up-and-coming lead actor wouldn’t want to sink his teeth into this dual role- an insecure, but hyper intelligent poetry professor, mirrored by his evil, charismatic, violence-driven twin? And the </font>role of<font face=”inherit”> his wife is equally challenging: a too good to be true, faithful to the </font>end<font face=”inherit”> loving wife, and her dark secret that compels her toward her husband’s dark counterpart.</font>
<font face=”inherit”>3. Two components- A. it’s Uniqueness (Duel meets Adaptation; Wake In Fright by way of Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers). Imagine your worst nightmare is yourself- an uncontrollable twin, hell-bent on running you off the road, killing you, and taking over your life?</font>
<font face=”inherit”>B. A great role for a bankable actor. You know how Nicholas Cage </font>sinks<font face=”inherit”> his teeth into every crazed role he takes on? How he draws a line in the sand, and then leaps past it and rips up everything in his path? This is one of those roles. Hell… you even get to beat the shit out of yourself. What actor could pass that up?</font>
<font face=”inherit”>4. What I learned from this assignment is that it’s actually kind of fun to try on a different hat and huckster the crap out of your script. It made me have newfound respect for this B-movie offering. I know I’d click on it, if it were on </font>Netflix<font face=”inherit”>.</font>
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Joan’s Marketable Components
What I learned doing this assignment is how to rework my writing about the components to make them more useable for pitching.
Logline: A young jail keeper in small rural village arrests a visiting storyteller, once a childhood friend, to keep her from telling their shared secret.
Marketable Components
I think the most useful way to market this script is by focusing on its uniqueness and its title.
This is how I’d pitch them.
Telling a personal story as a way of overcoming childhood trauma is not a new concept, but entering a world of stories that perpetually and daily renew one’s spirit is new. It can only be reached by going over the edge, a solution unique to my script.
Over the Edge, the name of my script, captures the entry into a world available to those with the courage to overcome resistance and both claim and express their own stories. That place where they enter the heart of the story to be renewed is where the clamshell of day closes and night catchers guard the spot where the light disappears.
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